#wickham gray

[mjmayhem]

Enclosed - Family Room Inspiration for a large coastal enclosed carpeted and beige floor family room remodel with blue walls, no fireplace and a wall-mounted tv

[jade-kristina]

Bedroom - Beach Style Bedroom Remodel ideas for a medium-sized coastal master bedroom with carpeting, gray walls, and no fireplace

[emvozbaixa]

Open (Minneapolis)

[quotes-and-recs]

From The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray

[thegirlwiththeleadarrow]

I swear by this rate Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney will take revisiting all six completed novels AND Austen’s various novellas/incomplete books to get together…

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Murder of Mr. Wickham | Author: Claudia Gray | Publisher: Knopf Doubleday (2022)

[devotionsforconfession]

Semi spoilery ramble about the Mr Darcy & Miss Tilney Mysteries:

OK right so I read The Murder of Mr Wickham like when it came out last year and I finished The Late Mrs Willoughby yday and!! I still love both oc main characters and have never been more frustrated by an ending as I have been w TLMW bc I was so desperate for them to just!!! Confess their feelings!!!

Also more than anything I kind of love the fact that it's a deconstruction of the Magical Autistic Detective Trope. Literally the last thing I expected these books to be but it's like top 3 reasons why this book is so good.

Esp bc it's set when autism just... wasn't understood to be a thing, it's shown to be hard for Jonathan!! He doesn't have magical powers, he has special interests in mostly obscure stuff! People are mean to him or confused by him or don't understand him and he is just convinced that he's never going to have friends who he can ever really be himself around.

And like there have not been many scenes that made me more visceral uncomfortable that the bit in book 2 when he's at a dinner party and one of his old schoolmates clocks that he has a crush, and intentionally asks him abt his special interest so he'll humiliate himself by going on and on about it without noticing. Like I felt that IN MY BONES I think we all have an experience like that if we don't mask carefully enough.

Sometimes Juliet gives neurodivergent vibes too, she just seems to be more adept at masking so it's less obvious to the reader, herself, and everyone else. Like Jonathan is semi regularly overwhelmed and frequently, sometimes unconsciously stims by rocking, and his parents and everyone around him have just convinced him there's something wrong with him.

Juliet has moments where the mask slips and she's blunt and is totally unaware of the unspoken social dance happening around her and she's like huh society's a fucking weird place wish it made more sense. Ah well. Alas.

I think the author does the Canon Austen characters brilliantly too!! I know some ppl have said that Fanny and Edmund annoyed them in book 1 but honestly (and this may be bc I'm a Mansfield Park girlie) I loved them and I loved the way their story paralleled their book! Fanny is right and Edmund comes to realise that is basically what it's about, and Fanny's strength of character beneath all her difficulties being assertive is basically the best thing about her.

Loved the Knightleys. Hilarious. Thought Emma was going to eat him mid way through the book and not in a good way, so; accurate. Darcy and Lizzie not communicating, her misunderstanding and being annoyed at him, him thinking his stoicism is going to help them through a hard time when actually it's isolated them from each other - nice parallel, like it.

I felt endlessly bad for Wentworth and Anne, hope they come back all better in a future book.

Honestly loved Brandon and Marianne, I felt like they were very true to their book characters.

Anyway my very fervent hope is that next book we get a Lady Susan Cameo, an icon, truly That Bitch. Or maybe they go to Sanditon idk, give me some resolution for that squad.

Got the vibe that maybe Juliet is going to Bath at some point in the near future. So I wonder who she'll meet then. I mean obviously Jonathan bc fate wants them to fall in love and get married and she can teach their kids how to climb trees and he can teach them the piano, but who else!!

Book only just came out and I'm hype for the next one but honestly it ended on a cliffhanger for them!! I want them to be friends again! No juliet he does like you he just can't make eye contact and doesn't like other people touching him!! I want them to meet again and solve idk the fucking stabbing of Sir Walter Elliot or Aunt Norris or Mr Elton!

And also comes their feelings the agony of not knowing kills me lol.

11/10 no notes. Well. Many notes but all of them good!!

[kammartinez]

The ugliest truth is more worthwhile than the most beautiful lie.

-- The Murder of Mr. Wickham (Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney #1), by Claudia Gray

[kamreadsandrecs]

Title: The Murder of Mr. Wickham (Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney #1) Author: Claudia Gray Genre/s: historical, mystery Content/Trigger Warning/s: murder, sexual harassment (off-page) Summary (from author's website): The happily married Mr. Knightley and Emma are throwing a house party, bringing together distant relatives and new acquaintances—characters beloved by Jane Austen fans. Definitely not invited is Mr. Wickham, whose latest financial scheme has netted him an even broader array of enemies. As tempers flare and secrets are revealed, it’s clear that everyone would be happier if Mr. Wickham got his comeuppance. Yet they’re all shocked when Wickham turns up murdered—except, of course, for the killer hidden in their midst.

Nearly everyone at the house party is a suspect, so it falls to the party’s two youngest guests to solve the mystery: Juliet Tilney, the smart and resourceful daughter of Catherine and Henry, eager for adventure beyond Northanger Abbey; and Jonathan Darcy, the Darcys’ eldest son, whose adherence to propriety makes his father seem almost relaxed. In a tantalizing fusion of Austen and Christie, the unlikely pair must put aside their own poor first impressions and uncover the guilty party—before an innocent person is sentenced to hang.

Buy Here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-murder-of-mr-wickham-claudia-gray/17502444 Spoiler-Free Review: This was a recommendation from my good friend Hope, and BOY is it a DELIGHT. I had to do some quick Wiki catch-up on a lot of the characters because there were plenty of holes in my memory for what happened to all these characters, but once that was done it was easy to dive right in.

Now, it might seem strange to put these familiar characters in a murder mystery, but I think that's part of what makes this book so compelling. It's sort of the same logic behind some of the darkest, most tragic series getting a crapton of coffeeshop AU fanfics: you want to see these characters in a different setting completely, in many cases one that's tonally different from the original, while still trying to maintain much of who they are. In the case of this book, taking Austen's mostly-genteel characters and settings, and then making them the stage for a murder, has a similar appeal. Even more intriguing, one of those aforementioned beloved characters is probably the murderer, which just adds to the appeal in my opinion.

(I also gotta say that I am unsurprised that Wickham is the murder victim here. Honestly, couldn't have happened to a better person. /s)

While I think the mystery itself was pretty well-plotted, what I most enjoyed was how this novel continued the lives of Austen's characters beyond their respective happily-ever-afters, and did so in a way that shows that, while a wedding might signify the end of a story, it does not signify the end of lives being lived. Marriage isn’t an ending; it’s a beginning: a beginning of a new way of living, with new ways of thinking and being and living with another person - especially true for characters of the Regency period when a couple wouldn’t have really had a very good chance to settle in with each other until after the wedding. I liked how this book showed that just because the wedding’s over and everyone’s ridden off into the sunset, it doesn’t mean that their lives are perfect.

This is most clearly shown in the character dynamics presented in the story. While a lot of their interactions feel familiar (and therefore "authentic" to the characters Austen wrote), there's also a lot that does not, because these are people who have changed over the time they've been married to each other. Austen's characters have layers, but Gray has added more layers, made them more complex and nuanced, by showing how the couples play off each other now that they're married. I think it's that combination of the familiar and the new that really makes the character dynamics shine and makes this book a joy to read.

While reading about Austen's characters is definitely entertaining and one of the major charms of this book, there's also the two original characters: Jonathan Darcy (son of Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth) and Juliet Tilney (daughter of Henry and Catherine). They were truly the stars of this book, and that's saying something given the powerhouse cast. Juliet is sharp in a way that reminds me of Elizabeth, almost, but the way she melds that sharpness with compassion and competency are truly her own, and make her a true standout.

And then there's Jonathan. It becomes immediately clear to the reader that he is neurodivergent: possibly autistic, but I can't say for sure as I'm not an expert. It was interesting to read how that fit into Regency society's understanding of such things, and how Jonathan and his family, and eventually Juliet, adjusted to it and helped Jonathan with it. I don't think the Regency period could even describe or had a word for Jonathan's neurodivergency, but it was still good to see the author handle the topic well.

Overall, this is a Jane Austen pastiche that does more than just parrot Austen’s works by expanding on the boundaries set in place by the original books, breathing new life into the characters by using the murder mystery as a way to imagine new angles to their dynamics. The original characters fit in well, and indeed managed to hold their own against the more familiar cast. There were many ways this could have been handled poorly, but I'm glad that this is an instance of a concept being handled very, very well. Rating: five bloody handkerchiefs

[evenaturtleduck]

You know how so many sequels featuring the second generation of characters end up making the first generation have grown up to be awful parents? The Murder of Mr. Wickham didn't do that. I'm not sure how I feel about everyone's characterization, and obviously in a murder mystery everyone needs to look plausibly guilty, but it was like "huh, I should probably revisit Mansfield Park and see what I think," instead of "this author has committed character assassination against the Wentworths." In fact, Mr. Knightley's tomato plants made me realize I never finished reading Emma, which is appalling because apparently I love this man.

Additionally, the two original characters--Juliet Tilney and Jonathan Darcy--are both precious (see above: beloved characters as decent parents trying their best) and I would die for them.

[ghostmaggie]

not me investing all my pre nancy drew free time and emotions into binge reading a book and then just as obsessively immediately devoting all my attention to the sequel and THEN taking the time to notice that the sequel in question came out a whopping TWENTY SEVEN DAYS AGO and the next book (??? there must be another but I can't find an official announcement yet) will, based on precedent, not be out until next may 🥴🙃🥲

[bargainsleuthbooks]

The Late Mrs. Willoughby (Mr. Darcy & Miss Tilney Mystery) by Claudia Gray #ARC #BookReview #NewBooks #JaneAusten

There's a new mystery featuring Jane Austen's characters' children. I thoroughly enjoyed #TheMurderofMrWickham, would it be the same for #TheLateMrsWilloughby #NetGalley #ARC #BookReview #Jane Austen #newbooks #MrDarcyandMissTilneyMystery #vikingbooks

Catherine and Henry Tilney of Northanger Abbey are not entirely pleased to be sending their eligible young daughter Juliet out into the world again: the last house party she attended, at the home of the Knightleys, involved a murder—which Juliet helped solve. Particularly concerning is that she intends to visit her new friend Marianne Brandon, who’s returned home to Devonshire shrouded in fresh…

[quotes-and-recs]

"He" being Mr. Wickham

From The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray

[sonic-spade]

[gamoradorable]

Kitchen - Dining A farmhouse sink, beaded inset cabinets, white cabinets, granite countertops, a blue backsplash, a ceramic backsplash, and stainless steel appliances are all featured in this transitional u-shaped eat-in kitchen design.